The League of Frightened Men

Chapter 14

I started for the hall to put my coat and hat away, but before I got to the door I turned and went back.

“Listen,” I said, “the roadster needs some exercise. We might fool around with the phone all afternoon and not get anywhere. Why don’t we do this: you phone Farrell’s friends here and see if you can get a line on him. I’ll roll down to Philly and call you up as soon as I arrive. If you haven’t found out anything, I’ll be on the ground to look for him. I can get there by two-thirty.”

“Excellent,” Wolfe agreed. “But the noon train will reach Philadelphia at two o’clock.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“Archie. Let us agree on the train.”

“Okay. I thought I might get away with it.”

There was plenty of time to discuss a few probabilities, since it was only a five-minute walk to the Pennsylvania Station. I caught the noon train, had lunch on the diner, and phoned Wolfe from the Broad Street Station at two minutes after two.

He had no dope, except the names of a few friends and acquaintances of Farrell’s in Philadelphia. I telephoned all I could get hold of, and chased around all afternoon, the Fine Arts Club, and an architectural magazine, and the newspaper offices to see if they knew who intended to build something and so on. I was beginning to wonder if an idea that had come to me on the train could possibly have anything in it. Was Farrell himself entangled somehow in the Chapin business, and had he written that note on that typewriter for some reason maybe to be discovered, and then beat it? Was there a chance that he hadn’t come to Philadelphia at all but somewhere else, even perhaps on a transatlantic liner?

But around six o’clock I got him. I had taken to phoning architects. After about three dozen I found one who told me that a Mr. Allenby who had got rich and sentimental was going to build a library for a Missouri town that had been lucky enough to give birth to him and then lose him. That was a building project I hadn’t heard of before. I phoned Allenby, and was told that Mr. Farrell was expected at his home at seven o’clock for dinner.

I snatched a pair of sandwiches and went out there, and then had to wait until he had finished his meal.

He came to me in Mr. Allenby’s library. Of course he couldn’t understand how I got there. I allowed him ten seconds for surprise and so forth, and then I asked him: “Last night you wrote a note to Nero Wolfe. Where’s the typewriter you wrote it on?”

He smiled like a gentleman being bewildered. He said, “I suppose it’s where I left it. I didn’t take it away.”

“Well, where was it? Excuse me for taking you on the jump like this. I’ve been hunting you for over five hours and I’m out of breath. The machine you wrote that note on is the one Paul Chapin used for his poems. That’s the little detail.”

“No!” He stared at me, and laughed. “By God, that’s good. You’re sure? After working so hard to get all those samples, and then to write that note — I’ll be damned.”

“Yeah. When you get around to it... “

“Certainly. I used a typewriter at the Harvard Club.”

“Oh. You did.”

“I did indeed. I’ll be damned.”

“Yeah. Where do they keep this typewriter?”

“Why, it’s one — it’s available to any of the members. I was there last evening when the telegram came from Mr. Allenby, and I used it to write two or three notes. It’s in a little room off the smoking-room, sort of an alcove. A great many of the fellows use it, off and on.”

“Oh. They do.” I sat down. “Well, this is nice. It’s sweet enough to make you sick. It’s available to anybody, and thousands of them use it.”

“Hardly thousands, but quite a few—”

“Dozens is enough. Have you ever seen Paul Chapin use it?”

“I couldn’t say — I believe, though — yes, in that little chair with his game leg pushed under — I’m pretty sure I have.”

“Any of your other friends, this bunch?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Do many of them belong to the club?”

“Oh, yes, nearly all. Mike Ayers doesn’t, and I believe Leo Elkus resigned a few years ago...”

“I see. Are there any other typewriters in the alcove?”

“There’s one more, but it belongs to a public stenographer. I understand this one was donated by some club member. They used to keep it in the library, but some of the one-finger experts made too much noise with it.”

“All right.” I got up. “You can imagine how I feel, coming all the way to Philadelphia to get a kick in the pants. Can I tell Wolfe when you’re coming back, in case he wants you?”

He said probably tomorrow, he had to prepare drawings to submit to Mr. Allenby, and I thanked him for nothing and went out to seek the air and a streetcar to North Philadelphia.

The train ride back to New York, in a smoker filled with the discard from a hundred pairs of assorted lungs, was not what I needed to cheer me up. I couldn’t think up anything to keep me awake, and I couldn’t go to sleep. We pulled in at the Pennsylvania Station at midnight, and I walked home.

The office was dark; Wolfe had gone to bed. There was no note for me on my desk, so nothing startling had happened. I got a pitcher of milk from the refrigerator and went upstairs. Wolfe’s room was on the same floor as mine; mine overlooking Thirty-fifth Street, and his in the rear. I thought possibly he was still awake and would like to hear the joyous news, so I went towards the back of the hall to see if there was light under his door — not going close, for when he went to bed there was a switch he turned on, and if anyone stepped within eight feet of his door or touched any of his windows a gong went off in my room that was enough to paralyze you. The slit under his door was dark, so I went on with my milk, and drank it while I was getting ready for bed.

Friday morning, after breakfast, I was still sitting in the office at eight-thirty. I sat there, first because I was sour on the Hibbard search anyway, and second because I was going to wait until nine o’clock and see Wolfe as soon as he got to the plant-rooms. But at eight-thirty the inside phone buzzed and I got on. It was Wolfe from his bedroom. He asked me if I had had a pleasant journey. I told him that all it would have needed to make it perfect was Dora Chapin for company. He asked if Mr. Farrell had remembered what typewriter he had used.

I told him. “A thing at the Harvard Club, in a little room off the smoking-room. It seems that the members all play tunes on it whenever the spirit moves them. The good thing about this is that it narrows it down, it rules out all Yale men and other roughnecks. You can see Chapin wanted to make it as simple as possible.”

Wolfe’s low murmur was in my ear: “Excellent.”

“Yeah. One of the facts you wanted. Swell.”

“No, Archie. I mean it. This will do nicely. I told you, proof will not be needed in this case, facts will do for us. But we must be sure beyond peradventure of the facts. Please find someone willing to favor us who is a member of the Harvard Club — not one of our present clients. Perhaps Albert Wright would do; if not him, find someone. Ask him to go to the club this morning and take you as a guest. On that typewriter make a copy — no. Not that. There must be no hole for Mr. Chapin to squirm through, should he prove more difficult than I anticipate. In spite of his infirmity, he is probably capable of carrying a typewriter. Do this: after making arrangements for a host, purchase a new typewriter — any good one, follow your fancy — and take it with you to the club. Bring away the one that is there and leave the new one; manage it as you please, by arrangement with the steward, by prestidigitation, whatever suggests itself. With, however, the knowledge of your host, for he must be qualified to furnish corroboration, at any future time, as to the identity of the machine you remove. Bring it here.”

“A new typewriter costs one hundred dollars.”

“I know that. It is not necessary to speak of it.”

“Okay.”

I hung up and reached for the telephone book.

That was how it happened that at ten o’clock that Friday morning I sat in the smoking-room of the Harvard Club with Albert Wright, a vice-president of Eastern Electric, drinking vermouth, with a typewriter under a shiny rubberized cover on the floor at my feet. Wright had been very nice, as he should have been, since about all he owed to Wolfe was his wife and family. That was one of the neatest blackmailing cases... but let it rest. It was true that he had paid Wolfe’s bill, which hadn’t been modest, but what I’ve seen of wives and families has convinced me that they can’t be paid for in cash; either they’re way above any money price that could be imagined or they’re clear out of sight in the other direction. Anyway, Wright had been nice about it. I was saying:

“This is it. It’s that typewriter in there that I showed you the number of and had you put a scratch under it. Mr. Wolfe wants it.”

Wright raised his brows. I went on:

“Of course you don’t care why, but if you do maybe he’ll tell you some day. The real reason is that he’s fond of culture and he don’t like to see the members of a swell organization like the Harvard Club using a piece of junk like that in there. I’ve got a brand new Underwood.” I touched it with my toe. “I just bought it, it’s a new standard machine. I take it in there and leave it, and bring away the junk, that’s all. If anyone sees me I am unconcerned. It’s just a playful lark; the club gets what it needs and Mr. Wolfe gets what he wants.”

Wright, smiling, sipped his vermouth. “I hesitate chiefly because you had me mark the junk for identification. I would do about anything for Nero Wolfe, but I would dislike getting in a mess and having the club dragged in too, perhaps. I suppose you couldn’t offer any guarantees on that score?”

I shook my head. “No guarantees, but knowing how Mr. Wolfe is arranging this charade I’d take you on a thousand to one.”

Wright sat a minute and looked at me, and then smiled again. “Well, I have to get back to the office. Go on with your lark. I’ll wait here.”

There was nothing to it. I picked up the Underwood and walked into the alcove with it and set it down on the desk. The public stenographer was there only ten feet away, brushing up his machine, but I merely got too nonchalant even to glance at him. I pulled the junk aside and transferred the shiny cover to it, put the new one in its place, and picked up the junk and walked out. Wright got up from his chair and walked beside me to the elevator.

On the sidewalk, at the street entrance, Wright shook hands with me. He wasn’t smiling; I guessed from the look on his face that his mind had gone back four years to another time we shook hands. He said, “Give Nero Wolfe my warmest regards, and tell him they will still be warm even if I get kicked out of the Harvard Club for helping to steal a typewriter.”

I grinned. “Steal my eye, it nearly broke my heart to leave that new Underwood there.”

I carried my loot to where I had parked the roadster on Forty-fifth Street, put it on the seat beside me, and headed downtown. Having it there made me feel like we were getting somewhere. Not that I knew where, but Wolfe either did or thought he did. I didn’t very often get really squeamish about Wolfe’s calculations; I worried, all right, and worked myself into a stew when it seemed to me that he was overlooking a point that was apt to trip us up, but down in my heart I nearly always knew that anything he was missing would turn out in the end to be something we didn’t need. In this case I wasn’t so sure, and what made me not so sure was that damn cripple. There was something in the way the others spoke about him, in the way he looked and acted that Monday night, in the way those warnings sounded, that gave me an uneasy idea that for once Wolfe might be underrating a guy. That wasn’t like him, for he usually had a pretty high opinion of the people whose fate he was interfering with. I was thinking that maybe the mistake he had made in this case was in reading Chapin’s books. He had definite opinions about literary merit, and possibly having rated the books pretty low, he had done the same for the man who wrote them. If he was rating Chapin low, I was all ready to fall in on the other side. For instance, here beside me was the typewriter on which the warnings had been written, all three of them, no doubt about it, and it was a typewriter to which Paul Chapin had had easy and constant access, but there was no way in the world of proving that he had done it. Not only that, it was a typewriter to which most of the other persons connected with the business had had access too. No, I thought, as far as writing those warnings went, nearly anything you might say about Chapin would be underrating him.

When I got to the house it wasn’t eleven o’clock yet. I carried the typewriter to the hall and put it down on the stand while I removed my hat and coat. There was another hat and coat there; I looked at them; they weren’t Farrell’s; I didn’t recognize them. I went to the kitchen to ask Fritz who the visitor was, but he wasn’t there, upstairs probably, so I went back and got the typewriter and took it to the office. But I didn’t get more than six feet inside the door before I stopped. Sitting there turning over the pages of a book, with his stick leaning against the arm of his chair, was Paul Chapin.

Something I don’t often do, I went tongue-tied. I suppose it was because I had under my arm the typewriter he had written his poems on, though certainly he couldn’t recognize it under the cover. But he could tell it was a typewriter. I stood and stared at him. He glanced up and informed me politely:

“I’m waiting for Mr. Wolfe.”

He turned another page in the book, and I saw it was Devil Take the Hindmost, the one Wolfe had marked things in. I said:

“Does he know you’re here?”

“Oh yes. His man told him some time ago. I’ve been here,” he glanced at his wrist, “half an hour.”

There hadn’t been any sign of his noticing what I was carrying. I went over and put it down on my desk and shoved it to the back edge. I went to Wolfe’s desk and glanced through the envelopes of the morning mail, the corner of my eye telling me that Chapin was enjoying his book. I brushed off Wolfe’s blotter and twisted his fountain pen around. Then I got sore, because I realized that I wasn’t inclined to go and sit at my desk, and the reason was that it would put me with my back to Paul Chapin. So I went there and got into my chair and got some plant records from the drawer and began looking at them. It was a damn funny experience; I don’t know what it was about that cripple that got under my skin so. Maybe he was magnetic. I actually had to clamp my jaw to keep from turning around to look at him, and while I was trying to laugh it off ideas kept flashing through my mind such as whether he had a gun and if so was it the one with the hammer nose filed down. I had a good deal stronger feeling of Paul Chapin, behind me, than I’ve had of lots of people under my eyes and sometimes under my hands too.

I flipped the pages of the record book, and I didn’t turn around until Wolfe came in.

I had many times seen Wolfe enter the office when a visitor was there waiting for him, and I watched him to see if he would vary his common habit for the sake of any effect on the cripple. He didn’t. He stopped inside the door and said, “Good morning, Archie.” Then he turned to Chapin and his trunk and head went forward an inch and a half from the perpendicular, in a sort of mammoth elegance. “Good morning, sir.” He proceeded to his desk, fixed the orchids in the vase, sat down, and looked through the mail. He rang for Fritz, took out his pen and tried it on the scratch pad, and when Fritz came nodded for beer. He looked at me:

“You saw Mr. Wright? Your errand was successful?”

“Yes, sir. In the bag.”

“Good. If you would please move a chair up for Mr. Chapin.—If you would be so good, sir? For either amenities or hostilities, the distance is too great. Come closer.” He opened a bottle of beer.

Chapin got up, grasped his stick, and hobbled over to the desk. He paid no attention to the chair I placed for him, nor to me, but stood there leaning on his stick, his flat cheeks pale, his lips showing a faint movement like a race horse not quite steady at the barrier, his light-colored eyes betraying neither life nor death — neither the quickness of the one nor the glassy stare of the other. I got at my desk and shuffled my pad in among a pile of papers, ready to take my notes while pretending to do something else, but Wolfe shook his head at me. “Thank you, Archie, it will not be necessary.

The cripple said, “There need be neither amenities nor hostilities. I’ve come for my box.”

“Ah! Of course. I might have known.” Wolfe had turned on his gracious tone. “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Chapin, may I ask how you knew I had it?”

“You may ask.” Chapin smiled. “Any man’s vanity will stand a pat on the back, won’t it, Mr. Wolfe? I inquired for my package where I had left it, and was told it was not there, and learned of the ruse by which it had been stolen. I reflected, and it was obvious that the likeliest thief was you. You must believe me, this is not flattery, I really did come to you first.”

“Thank you. I do thank you.” Wolfe, having emptied a glass, leaned back and got comfortable. “I am considering — this shouldn’t bore you, since words are the tools of your trade — I am considering the comical and tragical scantiness of all vocabularies. Take, for example, the procedure by which you acquired the contents of that box, and I got the box and all; both our actions were, by definition, stealing, and both of us are thieves; words implying condemnation and contempt, and yet neither of us would concede that he has earned them. So much for words — but of course you know that, since you are a professional.”

“You said contents. You haven’t opened the box.”

“My dear sir! Could Pandora herself have resisted such a temptation?”

“You broke the lock.”

“No. It is intact. It is simple, and surrendered easily.”

“And... you opened it. You probably...” He stopped and stood silent. His voice had gone thin on him, but I couldn’t see that his face displayed any feeling at all, not even resentment. He continued, “In that case... I don’t want it. I don’t want to see it.—But that’s preposterous. Of course I want it. I must have it.”

Wolfe, looking at him with half-closed eyes, motionless, said nothing. That lasted for seconds. All of a sudden Chapin demanded, suddenly hoarse:

“Damn you, where is it?”

Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “Mr. Chapin. Sit down.”

“No.”

“Very well. You can’t have the box. I intend to keep it.”

Still there was no change on the cripple’s face. I didn’t like him, but I was admiring him. His light-colored eyes had kept straight into Wolfe’s, but now they moved; he glanced aside at the chair I had placed for him, firmed his hand on the crook of his stick, and limped three steps and sat down. He looked at Wolfe again and said:

“For twenty years I lived on pity. I don’t know if you are a sensitive man, I don’t know if you can guess what a diet like that would do. I despised it, but I lived on it, because a hungry man takes what he can get. Then I found something else to sustain me. I got a measure of pride in achievement, I ate bread that I earned, I threw away the stick that I needed to walk with, one that had been given me, and bought one of my own. Mr. Wolfe, I was done with pity. I had swallowed it to the extreme of toleration. I was sure that, whatever gestures I might be brought, foolishly or desperately, to accept from my fellow creatures, it would never again be pity.”

He stopped. Wolfe murmured. “Not sure. Not sure unless you carried death ready at hand.”

“Right. I learn that today. I seem to have acquired a new and active antipathy to death.”

“And as regards pity...”

I need it. I ask for it. I discovered an hour ago that you had got my box, and I have been considering ways and means. I can see no other way to get it than to plead with you. Force” — he smiled the smile that his eyes ignored — “is not feasible. The force of law is of course, under the circumstances, out of the question. Cunning — I have no cunning, except with words. There is no way but to call upon your pity. I do so, I plead with you. The box is mine by purchase. The contents are mine by... by sacrifice. By purchase I can say, though not with money. I ask you to give it back to me.”

“Well. What plea have you to offer?”

“The plea of my need, my very real need, and your indifference.”

“You are wrong there, Mr. Chapin. I need it too.”

“No. It is you who are wrong. It is valueless to you.”

“But, my dear sir.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “If I permit you to be the judge of your own needs you must grant me the same privilege. What other plea?”

“None. I tell you, I will take it in pity.”

“Not from me. Mr. Chapin. Let us not keep from our tongues what is in our minds. There is one plea you could make that would be effective.—Wait, hear me. I know that you are not prepared to make it, not yet, and I am not prepared to ask for it. Your box is being kept in a safe place, intact. I need it here in order to be sure that you will come to see me whenever I am ready for you. I am not yet ready. When the time comes, it will not be merely my possession of your box that will persuade you to give me what I want and intend to get. I am preparing for you. You said you have acquired a new and active antipathy to death. Then you should prepare for me: for the best I shall be able to offer you, the day you come for your box, will be your choice between two deaths. I shall leave that, for the moment, as cryptic as it sounds; you may understand me, but you certainly will not try to anticipate me.—Archie. In order that Mr. Chapin may not suspect us of gullery, bring the box please.”

I went and unlocked the cabinet and got the box from the shelf, and took it and put it down on Wolfe’s desk. I hadn’t looked at it since Wednesday and had forgotten how swell it was; it certainly was a pip. I put it down with care. The cripple’s eyes were on me, I thought, rather than on the box, and I had a notion of how pleased he probably was to see me handling it. For nothing but pure damn meanness I rubbed my hand back and forth along the top of it. Wolfe told me to sit down.

Chapin’s hands were grasping the arms of his chair, as if to lift himself up. He said, “May I open it?”

“No.”

He got to his feet, disregarding his stick, leaning on a hand on the desk. “I’ll just... lift it.”

“No. I’m sorry, Mr. Chapin. You won’t touch it.”

The cripple leaned there, bending forward, looking Wolfe in the eyes. His chin was stuck out. All of a sudden he began to laugh. It was a hell of a laugh, I thought it was going to choke him. He went on with it. Then it petered out and he turned around and got hold of his stick. He seemed to me about half hysterical, and I was ready to jump him if he tried any child’s play like bouncing the stick on Wolfe’s bean, but I had him wrong again. He got into his regular posture, leaning to the right side with his head a little to the left to even up, and from his light-colored eyes steady on Wolfe again you would never have guessed he had any sentiments at all.

Wolfe said, “The next time you come here, Mr. Chapin, you may take the box with you.”

Chapin shook his head. His tone was new, sharper: “I think not. You’re making a mistake. You’re forgetting that I’ve had twenty years’ practice at renunciation.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Oh no. On the contrary, that’s what I’m counting on. The only question will be, which of two sacrifices you will select. If I know you, and I think I do, I know where your choice will lie.”

“I’ll make it now.” I stared at the cripple’s incredible smile; I thought to myself that in order to break him Wolfe would have to wipe that smile off, and it didn’t look practical by any means I’d ever heard of. With the smile still working, fixed, Chapin put his left hand on the desk to steady himself, and with his right hand he lifted his stick up, pointing it in front of him like a rapier, and gently let its tip come to rest on the surface of the desk. He slid the tip along until it was against the side of the box, and then pushed, not in a hurry, just a steady push. The box moved, approached the edge, kept going, and tumbled to the floor. It bounced a little and rolled towards my feet.

Chapin retrieved his stick and got his weight on it again. He didn’t look at the box; he directed his smile at Wolfe. “I told you, sir, I had learned to live on pity. I am learning now to live without it.”

He tossed his head up, twice, like a horse on the rein, got himself turned around, and hobbled to the door and on out. I sat and watched him; I didn’t go to the hall to help him. We heard him out there, shuffling to keep his balance as he got into his coat. Then the outer door opening and closing.

Wolfe sighed. “Pick it up, Archie. Put it away. It is astonishing, the effect a little literary and financial success will produce on a spiritual ailment.”

He rang for beer.